open your eyes

edible wild–early spring

I’ve been fascinated by connection all my life. I love digging into the nature of relationships, whether they’re cultivated or if they’re something handed to us—just by virtue of being born on Planet Earth.

It may be that last part that explains my sort of odd obsession with picking fruit from one wild tree or another (or yet another), or from wild plants. It definitely explains why I wanted to undertake the foraging project I’m on now, and have lately been spending my days walking slowly along the streets of my community, back bent toward the ground, as if looking for a lost glove or perhaps my sanity among the newly sprouting vegetation.

This post represents the first look at the food that’s not hawked by the ad slickies at Madison Avenue but instead is quietly offered by the earth, all year, as the sun waxes and wanes. I’ll be continuing this ‘edible wild’ series from time to time during 2013 and hope you dig it.* Mostly I hope that you’ll get as excited as I am about wild food, that you’ll get jazzed to see what’s growing around you and want to learn about it. Besides the connection we have with our own selves—me to myself and you to yourself—I think the most essential connection on earth is the one we have with the earth; and it’s a connection that, to a great extent, has been broken. That can change.

About my choices above…

My home is the suburban NJ, USA shore, dotted with wide and narrow stretches of lake and consisting of sandy soil. The photo above represents a sampling of the edibles growing wild in my area,** although I’m sure there are many more.

Helpful note 1: Obviously don’t forage too close to roadsides, where dogs might have, ahem, frequented; and be wary of wild edibles growing too near residential properties, as they might have taken on pesticides used there.

Helpful note 2: I am no botanist or horticulturist (to which any of my bio teachers can attest). Among the above foods shown I’ve eaten wild garlic and dandelion only. To learn what else was edible, I sought out online sources for assistance. Above all, before eating it, be sure that what you think is a certain plant is in fact a certain plant.

Please chime in with your additions, clarifications—and recipes, if you’ve got ’em. And I’d love to hear what grows near you.

Clockwise from top:

Forsythia (Forsythia x intermedia)

Enjoy blossoms raw in salads, cooked, dried or made into a syrup that can be used as a drink mixer.

Kind of shadowed; sorry about that. Entirely edible, but seems to benefit from the addition of salt to ease digestion.

northernbushcraft.com/plants/clover/notes.htm

Snowdrop(Galanthus spp.)

Not so much a food as a tonic, purported to soothe stomach and joint pain as well as women’s reproductive problems.

gardenguides.com/92486-snowdrop-flowers.html

Wild Garlic (Allium vineale)

What we kids used to call ‘onion grass’ and pull up just to sniff its assertive fragrance—it should smell strongly of onions or garlic. Chop and enjoy raw or cooked. Eat it now, when it’s tender; once summer hits and it’s about to go to seed, the interior of these cylindrical sprouts becomes woody and dry.

ppws.vt.edu/scott/weed_id/allvi.htm

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)***

Roots, blossoms and young leaves edible; any longer than a finger’s length and the leaves become too bitter for me (but you might like them like that). This healthy plant can also be used as a tonic. And since Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine is one of my favorite books, one summer I was inspired to steep a bunch of flowers in vodka and a simple syrup, and made a lovely pale yellow liqueur.

umm.edu/altmed/articles/dandelion-000236.htm

Spring Crocus (Crocus Vernus)

Bulb, blossom and stigma all edible. I tried to dig up a bulb for the photo, but the ground was really resistant, and I didn’t want to damage the other flowers to get it.

arthurleej.com/p-o-m-Feb13.html

*Pun totally intentional. Shocker.

**I know plants from the ocean are missing from this picture. I really wanted to include some, but it’s been a cold month so far. Once it gets warmer I’ll see what I can find there.

***Why aren’t there any dandelion blossoms in this picture, Maris? Because I searched across three towns for some and then gave up and took the shot. Guess how many I saw the next few days? I’m not even kidding: It was as if they hid under the ground, giggling, then exploded like popcorn in a Jiffy Pop pan once I uploaded the picture. I even passed a whole lawn of them and considered coming back with my camera, but I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.

9 Responses

In our youth, My mother would pull over on roads around northeastern Colorado and she
Would pick a “weed” that she called ‘Lambsquarter’…! If it was a bumper crop amount she would cook it for us. If not that big if a find, we kids would all get a raw taste!
I remember it being a little bitter raw; But, cooked it was pretty righteous because mom would smother it in melted butter !

She is an elderly great-grandma now. But on drives in the country, especially now coming springtime, she will see it alongside a country road and will brag to us as to her “supplementing our diet” with this wild, edible
roadside lettuce!

Thanks for the note, Marisa ! Love hearing from you! The article was great, and I was thinking you could title the accompanying photo as, “The Circle of Easily Edacious Wildlife”…..! Which of course would be in opposition to a picture of NOT easily edacious wildlife, which would of course be a picture of Elk, Pronghorns, Rocky Mountain Sheep, and other tougher to acquire edibles!!

Wild food is long way off here in the Rocky Mountains. Mostly we find raspberries in late summer. We try not to compete too much with the bears. If it is a low crop, we will snack on a few and not actually gather any. My wife likes to stir them into melted chocolate. We also gather rose hips and make tea from them. They are very high in vitamin C. In the fall, we look for mushrooms. Hawkswing, and Chanterelle being the ones we really seek out. Sauteed and served with fish or pasta. Yummy! When I was a kid, we lived on Long Island near the shore. A huge patch of mussels would appear at low tide and we would gather bucket fulls. We had no idea how much work that meant for Mom to clean them. But she would steam them up for us anyway. Delicious and tons of fun for us kids….

We eat Lambs quarters regularly from our SC garden. They come up in disturbed soil. It tastes like a mild spinach and cooks up like that. As the weather heats up, the leaf stems get tough, and it is best to take just the tender tops off a plant. Some people dip the seed stalk into a batter, deep fry, then pull them off between their teeth. I haven’t tried that yet. We also use them in Green Smoothies. They are more nutrient dense than spinach, esp in vit c.
Amaranth is also a staple with us, when the greens are young. they also grow rampantly in old garden soil. The seeds are used for flour in other countries. Amaranth is closely related to celosia and this can be eaten as well.
We use a lot of the wild garlic, and chop the green part up for chives. We freeze dry it and use them all year for seasoning.
Wild chicory is great in the spring in a salad, but quickly get too bitter here. In the fall, we dig the roots and roast them for coffee substitute. The pretty blue flowers are lovely garnishes to a salad or other fresh foods.
Violet flowers and leaves are edible, and calming. Violet leaves can be used fresh or dried as teas. Violet flowers can be used as a garnish, both fresh or dried, as can pansies, their cousins. Those are just a few of the more common wild edobles we use here at home.
Donna Putney

Hi Donna–Thank you so much for writing! Readers keep telling me about lamb’s quarters, and until I started this project had never heard of them before. I’ll have to watch for them (I want to try nettles, too). Also, how do you prepare fresh violet leaves–in salads? Very curious!

I’m the founder/moderator for Punk Domestics (www.punkdomestics.com), a community site for those of use obsessed with, er, interested in DIY food. It’s sort of like Tastespotting, but specific to the niche. I’d love for you to submit this to the site. Good stuff!

Hi Sean–Wow–I *LOVE* your site! Seems we’re cut from the same cloth🙂 So glad you wrote and introduced it to me. Thanks for the kind words and invitation to submit ‘edible wild–early spring’. Will do, and I’d like to submit other hardcore DIY posts I’ve written for consideration as well.

Thanks again, and looking forward to snooping around your site a bit more…M